09 November 2008

New Teeth for 'Big Woodie'

What a great weekend in the 'shop, I seemed to have got a huge amount of stuff done. The main thing on Saturday was to start the machining on the cherry for the table, so I managed to shove all the stuff through the p/t so that it was pretty much to size. I'm going to leave it for another few weeks to condition a bit more before the final sizing. Trouble was that the blades on the planer were as blunt as a blunt thing so it was a real effort to shove the stuff through...so this morning they had a long overdue sharpening on the Tormek. The difference was fantastic so it's a New Year resolution (made well in advance) that I must remember to sharpen the planer blades on a regular basis.So what's with the pic? When I made 'Big Woodie' back in the summer, I must have altered the temper on the original blade (when I ground it from 50 to 44mm) so that it was pretty abysmal and tended to loose the edge after about three minutes...no good at all. I asked Philly if I could have a lump of 6mm tool steel and he let me have a decent bit at Wesonbirt. Well this weekend I prepared it to size (you can see from the pic that Phill has roughly ground the bevel) so that all it needs now is to be hardened and tempered (again, Phill will do that for me as I don't have a big enough gas torch for the job) an then BW will be up and running.I also did a bit of saw sharpening as well, something I haven't done for a good few years. Martin let me have a couple of old saws to play around with (one was a decent back saw and the other was a very nice cross-cut) I did a reasonable job on the tenon saw, not fantastic, but fair, suffice I think to say, that it's a lot better now than when Maritn let me have it a while ago. The cross-cut has been stripped down and all (or most of) the rust has been cleaned off the blade, the handle has been stripped of all the originalgloopy varnish and is now drying, even as I type, in the airing cupboard. It just remains to be set, sharpened and re-assembled and then I reckon it'll look, and perform, pretty well...time will tell.I also decided to make another small project while I'm waiting for the cherry to condition. When Pete and I went to see Waka, he let me have some offcuts of American Oak and I'm going to make a small display unit for some comical mugs (of which more later) but the thing which is quite interesting is that I'm going to make a curved drawer in this little unit...something I've never done before but which I've always wanted to have a go at. As I said in an earlier entry, flat and square is relatively easy...bringing a little bit of curvature into your work makes life a whole lot more interesting, and ultimately a lot harder, but that's life, init?